the common sentiment that people voice about kingdom hearts is that "i can't take this seriously, mickey mouse is there." and that is a sentiment that, as a twenty four year old woman with a job and a lot of social commitments and a bit of well-earned cynicism all culminating in the abstract of having Shit To Do (as well as one who believes the walt disney company to be actual, corporeal evil), i wholeheartedly agree with. but i think that it's commonly expressed from the wrong place, or at the very least from a place that lacks the perspective you kind of need to look at kingdom hearts from.

so like, yeah, there's disney shit in here and looking at it with an adult brain it might be a bit difficult to reconcile that with the melodrama and the convoluted lore and that Special Vibe that only Kitase's crew is capable of, but like. i played kingdom hearts when i was six or seven years old, i didn't know that it Wasn't Cool to make mickey mouse into a political figurehead and i sure as hell didn't know what the hell "tonal clash" was. any differences were reconciled purely by my imagination and a willingness to simply go with it and be taken away - and once again, there wasn't really any publisher willing to go for it with their stories and concepts the way squaresoft was in their final years of operation. kingdom hearts is in many ways a complete encapsulation of that squaresoft philosophy of going as far as you possibly can with your ideas no matter how self-indulgent, wacky or dumb they may be, and that's something i really appreciate and a big part of why i cherish what i consider to be the two definitive examples of that, chrono cross and final fantasy viii.

on top of all of that i think the idea of taking all of the silly kid's movie stuff and putting serious storytelling on top of it and trying to inject it with meaningful ideas on dualism and pseudo-intellectual jungian imagery and incredibly (perhaps a bit TOO) sincere displays of intense emotional vulnerability is like, a pretty perfect encapsulation of what kingdom hearts is fundamentally about at its core; that is to say stolen childhoods and lost innocence.

at the end of the day it's a narrative about a bunch of kids who are being manipulated within or otherwise tossed adrift into plans and greater schemes that they don't really know much of anything about and have no reason to know anything about. they're just kids. you can read this as being part of a greater statement on abuse or trauma or just growing up or something, but what's important is that it's saying something losing one's childhood and that meant something to me even if i didn't realize it, as somebody who even at the tender age of six-or-seven was terrified of growing up and was desperate to cling onto what little childhood i had left. again, taking something so innately childish and injecting it with Serious Stuff is a perfect culmination of that idea.

i haven't touched this game (or KH2, which was my favorite as a wee thing) in years and i'm not sure i will, but that's okay, it's not something that's really meant for me anyway. sure, kingdom hearts is schlocky and a bit embarrassingly self-indulgent sometimes and the concept is a bit too ridiculous for me to stomach even now as i've developed a taste for over-the-top chuuni shit (i like tsukihime for christs sakes). but that's fine. it's not for me, it's for six-or-seven year old me and meant to be experienced through a worldview that i'm just not capable of putting myself into anymore.

growing up sucks, and it's important to cherish the innocence of being a kid for everything it's worth, even when that's actively being taken away from you - if not by outside forces then by the passage of time itself.